Call for schools in Lancashire to stay shut until a 'safer, later' date

Call for schools in Lancashire to stay shut

Senior Labour politicians in Lancashire have written an open letter to the leader of Lancashire County Council calling on him to set a “safer, later” date for the partial reopening of schools than the 1st June target suggested by the government.

The correspondence claims that there is currently insufficient testing capacity in the county to roll out a fully-operational test, track and trace strategy for containing coronavirus – even without sending some children back to school.

The government this week said that anybody over the age of five who is displaying Covid symptoms will be entitled to a test, as pressure mounted over ministerial attempts to encourage a return to the classroom for pupils in reception, year one and year six at the start of next month.

Lancashire County Council has already said that the final decision on reopening must rest with individual headteachers – and that the authority will support them in whatever they decide.

Signed by eight district council leaders, the leader of County Hall’s Labour opposition group and the Lancashire branches of half a dozen trade unions, the letter states that there is “no appetite to reopen schools whilst serious risks remain unresolved”.

It continues: “Lancashire County Council has already confirmed that there is only capacity for 3,500 tests to be carried out daily pan Lancashire and, in order to have a successful 14-day rolling programme across the county, there would need to be 5,600 tests per day.

“The government’s pledge to allow anyone over the age of five who is symptomatic means that capacity may need to rise to up to 10,000 [tests] per day. This gives a sense of the real challenge our infrastructure is facing in Lancashire.

“We do not feel that Lancashire County Council has fully grasped the seriousness of the situation and the immense pressure and stress its current position is placing not only on schools, but parents who are not sure what to do,” adds the letter, which has also been endorsed by the county Liberal Democrat and Green Party groups.

The Labour opposition group leader at County Hall, Azhar Ali, said that the signatories of the letter were making “a plea” to the authority to make its own position clear.

“We are asking the county council to advise schools not to reopen until a later date – and until Lancashire has a fit and proper system in place to protect, children, families and staff in order to ensure that we don’t have a second wave of infections.

“Why not just write to schools and say that?” asked County Cllr Ali, adding that the issue was not about political point-scoring.

But that is exactly what he was accused of by Conservative county council leader Geoff Driver.

“County Cllr Ali and his Labour leader colleagues ought to be thoroughly ashamed of themselves in seeking to politicise an issue that it is of understandable concern to schools and parents.

“I can only stress what I have repeated before – that no schools in Lancashire will reopen unless it is safe to do so,” County Cllr Driver said.

Speaking at a general media briefing about the coronavirus crisis on Wednesday, Lancashire’s director of public health said that the “direction of travel” should be about getting as many children back into mainstream education as possible.

“Nothing is risk free, but what I am saying to colleagues is that it is not helpful to have complex guidance and mixed messages from all sorts of sources,” said Dr. Sakthi Karunanithi.

“The best people [to] know when it is safe to reopen schools are headteachers and governors.

“We’re working with them and [other] groups to put specific advice [in place] when needed, but also to keep it under live review. We’ve still got 10 more days [until 1st June], so things will change.”

Earlier this week, cabinet member for schools, Phillippa Williamson, told the Local Democracy Reporting Service:

“In Lancashire, we have a range of schools that are governed under different relevant bodies, and headteachers who decide on a school-by-school basis what the right decision is for their school, in consultation with governors.

“We know that they are best-placed to be able to make individual choices based on the circumstances of their schools – the decision to allow more children to return to their school lies with them. We will support schools in the decisions they make.”

As a growing number of councils indicated that they would not be expecting schools in their areas to reopen at the start of June, the government appeared to soften its stance in recent days.

It had already stated that the move could only happen if five tests for lifting broader lockdown measures were being met at the time – and on Wednesday, the justice secretary Robert Buckland said: “There may well be issues from employers that need to be addressed which might not mean we’ll see a uniform approach on 1st June.”

The majority of Lancashire’s schools have remained open during the lockdown for the children of key workers and vulnerable families.

The full list of signatories of the letter to County Cllr Driver is:

County Councillor Azhar Ali – Labour opposition group leader, Lancashire County Council

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